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Friday, April 10, 2009

INSEAD R1 First Interview

The first INSEAD interview took place with an alumnus at the end of 2008 in the alumnus office. He was working as strategy consultant for Technology-oriented consulting company. Half of the interview was in English, the other half in French.

The general atmosphere of the interview was friendly. My interviewer asked some difficult questions but did it in a nice way so you do not feel uncomfortable when answering them.

It took place very early in the morning as he only had out-of-office availabilities. If you face this, really make sure you have a good night sleep beforehand!

We went through the traditional MBA Interview questions:

Introduce yourself

Describe your career to date

Why MBA?

Why now?

Why INSEAD?

He then asked about a challenging project I had recently. He wanted me to explain why it was challenging and what actions I took to solve this challenge.

Thereafter he asked several questions related to the economic news and telecom industry:

How do you understand the current economic crisis?

Will it have an impact on your company?

What are the main challenges your company is facing?

What is the business model of your industry?

As I mentionned my entrepreneurship projects post-MBA, he asked whether I already tried to setup somethin g and why I needed to do an MBA to do that. As I already tried to setup a business with one of my friends, I described what we did in terms of prototyping and market studies. He was very interested and wanted to know what kind of product we had been working on. The discussion continued naturally for few minutes.

Then I got the opportunity to ask questions about the INSEAD program and student life.